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Read a 2,000 word article adapted from Wounded 
Workers
 

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      Hands hurt after work? Find yourself rubbing your forearms, and asking loved ones to rub your shoulders? Dropping your coffee mug or teacup a lot lately, or figuring out ways to go through doors without using your hands? You might be among the increasing numbers of people who have "the number one occupational disease of the information age." And yes, it can get very serious.

     One out of fifteen Canadians lives with a preventable and potentially permanently disabling MusculoSkeletal Injury (MSI), also known as a Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), according to Statistics Canada's national health survey. Students--as well as middle-aged adults--are reporting upper-body MSIs such as tendinitis, hand/wrist nerve problems including carpal tunnel syndrome, and myofascial pain.

In the US, where they are called Cumulative Trauma Disorders, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) estimates that workers report 1.8 million work-related musculoskeletal disorders annually,  of which 600,000 cases are serious enough for workers to lose a day or more from their jobs. NIOSH found that, collectively, these MSIs include about one-third of all the serious job-related injuries. 

In Canada, MSIs cost billions of dollars annually in medical and Workers' Compensation costs. Conservative estimates place the direct MSI costs in the USA at about $20 billion; with indirect expenses, that figure could be as high as $100 billion a year.

      Women file two-thirds of US WCB claims for upper-limb MSIs. Women's hands, wrists, arms and shoulders are most likely to be affected, which interferes  with their work in the home as well as in the workplace. While the majority of job-related MSIs occur in manufacturing or retail, a growing number are associated with computer use. 

      Funny, most people recognize immediately how much daily life would be disrupted if our feet did not function. Yet MSI patients report that when they try to explain that their hands don't work, the most common response is, "You don't look disabled."  Mainstream medicine offers few effective remedies. Many MSI patients endure multiple surgeries, with varying degrees of success.

    Indeed, MSIs are so difficult to treat in the advanced stages, that most experts look to prevention through early detection and through ergonomics programs in the workplace. Ergonomics programs not only protect workers from injury, but often increase productivity as well. Yet many employers resist ergonomics, and fiercely oppose the idea of ergonomics regulations for occupational health and safety.

    Wounded Workers explores the politics of MSIs, including:
the conflicts between mainstream and complementary medicine;
the lack of solid statistics on MSIs;
how attitudes formed during the Australian epidemic of the 1980s affect current North American policies;
the trend among Workers' Compensation Boards to reduce benefits and eligibility overall and to declare MSIs ineligible for benefits even as the incidence rises;
the ongoing litigation against computer equipment manufacturers;
the emerging field of ergonomics, with all its internal differences;
advantages and disadavantages of voluntary ergonomics programs;
union advocacy of ergonomics and how union-management relations affect the implementation of ergonomics;
the ferocious battles over ergonomics regulations in the US and paucity of such regulations in Canada;
comparison with occupational health and safety regulations in other parts of the industrialized world;
and a general overview of how inequitable distribution of employment contributes to MSIs in the workplace. 

"Penney Kome has produced a wide-ranging and well researched account of the epidemic of musculoskeletal injury among workers in North America, an epidemic little known to the general public...This will be the best guide to musculo-skeletal injury for years to come...."
                                Dave Bennett, director Occupational Health and Safety, Canadian Labour Congress, in Canadian Book Review Annual 1999

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